Five solves vast storage problem

Channel Five, part of the RTL Group, has deployed four EqualLogic PS400E storage arrays to provide more than 30 terabytes of storage capacity for rapidly growing digital media data and to ensure business continuity. This deployment complements the company’s virtualised server environment, allowing Five to optimise its entire IT infrastructure for simple management and reliable disaster recovery capabilities.

The increasing demand from viewers for easily accessible digital media content made it critical for the company to have a scalable storage and server infrastructure. The shift in user demand from analogue to larger, digital files caused an explosion in the volume of data that Five needed to house and have available, which was a burden for its IT department to manage.

To keep pace with this fast growing amount of data, Ken Davis, CIO at Five, evaluated both Fibre Channel and iSCSI products. He chose to implement a virtualised storage environment based on EqualLogic’s PS Series iSCSI storage arrays due to their enterprise-class performance and flexible management capabilities.

“Our storage requirements are vast: we need to store company data as well as have digital content available for viewers to access on demand,” said Davis. “However, as a relatively small IT department, we could not afford to have staff resources dedicated solely to supporting a SAN. To solve this problem, we chose EqualLogic’s PS Series storage arrays, which offer us a cost-effective solution that requires little on-going management. Our IT team can now focus on other priorities, including the continual enhancement of content and applications, which is critical for our success as a business in the digital world.”